Peaceful Coexistence - Writing for the Engines

Brett Tabke is moderating this session, named Peaceful Coexistence - Writing for the Engines . I have expectations that this might shade towards the side of black hat writing. But I am not too sure about that expectation, we will see...maybe I am hopeful. He introduces the folks, Ted as the best designer out there and Jen as the foremost expert in AdSense.

Ted Ulle - Partner The MEWS Group
How do you put together a complete package so your content doesn't get lost in the way. How to avoid the "frankin site." Work flow must support your priorities. Your business goals must be number one; must look simple & seamless to the end user (which works for both the user and the search bot). So simplicity has to be your discipline. Work flow; (1) Web strategy (SEO - keyword design process) he explains he gets annoyed when a client brings a completed site to him and asks him to "SEO it" (I know, I know...), (2) Content (3) Backend & Metrics (4) Information Architecture (5) Menu & Content (2nd round), your menu is content (6) Graphic Design, now talk to a graphic designer (7) Final Web Edit in HTML. Make sure to document each decision.

Web Strategy - SEO
- Mine your Market's Language. Look at forums, emails, keyword neighborhoods (LSI - he explains that LSI is out there (my comments: not too sure if LSI term should be used here...) and you do not need to stuff the keywords in there, the engines will figure it out based on your "universe around your keyphrase"). He said you can now, more then ever before, write for the users and have confidence the search engines will pick it up properly (my comments: I like that).
- Research the Market's Concerns
- Build a Process - Not a Product

Content
Skiing is a high control approach, which is like pick your phrase and force it to rank.
Surfing is when you use shifts in environments, which is when your write your content, watch logs, and tweak for phrases that already bring traffic.

Backend Choices
Not by Default - there are choices, this is technical bedrock, check server headers/mime types, don't put everything on index.php? (2,000 pages all in one index.php).

Build In the Metrics
Already know the business goals, define the key metrics, and logs are almost never enough for tracking purposes and then build in what you need right here.

Menu & Navigation
Menus are Content (make it descriptive). Tell a story of the site in your navigation (it can work well). Single Words or Longer Phrases all work. Too many equivalent choices is the same as no choice

Graphic Design
Only now and not before the other steps do the graphic design. IA and menus in place, graphics must not drive the process. designer must respect the medium. Work with the designer.

Final Web Edit
This is not a time to be timid, content interacts with layout, ask for outside opinions (couple of people outside). Really get someone who really knows CSS, you can kill good content with bad layout and boost content with good layout.

Showing off works against your business; typical culprits are graphic designers, server side spaghetti, client side features, print mindset and IT folks writing copy (email messages, error messages and so on). Accidents will happen, despite all your planning things will need to be reworked. He then concludes very elegantly.

Jennifer Slegg - President JenSense
Jen is going to talk about Duplicate Content. Duplicate content is when your original article can be found on more than a single page on the internet, it will go into the supplemental index (one of them will). Google finds new version of the article (people who took your content) and places your original content in the supplemental index. To find stolen content, take snippet of the middle of the article or so and paste it into Google with quotes around it, and then presto. Copyscape.com helps you find duplicate content, there are some third party tools that can alert you if one of your selected articles were stolen. What can you do to remove stolen content? Take screen shots, then send a cease & desist to site owner, send a DMCA notice to search engines or send a DMCA to hosting company. She then describes each one in detail (i'll take a little break here). Interesting, Google sends all DMCAs reported to them to chillingeffects.org. The infringer can file a counter complaint to get back in. If this happens, use archive.org to prove date for when the site has been there.

Heather Lloyd-Martin - Director of Search Strategies WebSourced, Inc.
She was unable to make it here today. She is a great speaker and its a real shame for the audience.

Q & A:
Q: How did you do an LSI analysis?
A: Ted said from a site named Theme-Master.com for a fee. But he said you don't have to be that heavy, just go to top ranking pages and look at content and write down nouns used on those pages.

Q: What percentage triggers a duplicate content filter?
A: Jen answers that it was a low percentage of duplication (50% or so) about two years ago, then it let up and now its low again. But the percentage is really unknown.